Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Book publishers, who needs 'em?

[Joani Blank (joani]

I've not been paying a lot of attention to cohousing-l lately.  Too many 
other cohousing things on my plate.  But I have to jump in on this 
one.  Although not active in the field any more, I have been a small 
publisher since 1975.  Also, I know Graham, think highly of his work, and 
agree that his book should be made available far and wide.  So here's the 
reality.

1. There's way more to publishing a book than getting X number 
printed.  The distribution system for small press books is crappy; for 
distribution system for self-published books is non-existent even when the 
author has many many titles to his or her credit.

2. I invest/loan money to a number of friends-in-business, but I'd never 
invest in a self published book, even a stellar one as I'm sure Graham's 
is, unless the author had a grand scheme and or/a lot of other money to 
publicize, promote and distribute his or her book. A multitude of authors 
who've printed up a few thousand copies of their work--no matter how good 
or useful it is--end up ten years later having sold a couple hundred copies 
with the rest languishing in multiple cartons under the bed, making it hard 
to sleep at night.

3.  Also, think about the market for this book. As much as we might wish 
otherwise, I think it is still pretty darned small. And then only if the 
potential buyers find out about it.

4.  The numbers that Kevin  speculated for what it would cost to self 
publish are quite distant from reality (for instance a publsier typically 
gets just a shade over 50% of the cover price from a distributor or 
wholesaler.) but even using his numbers it looks like  the self publishing 
author would be making $3.00 a book and have to sell 11,660 just to pay the 
print bill for the first printing, and he'd have to have printed  at least 
almost 6000 more in order to have that number to sell.  It doesn't (as they 
say in so many businesses) "pencil out" now does it.  And does Kevin have 
any idea how much time, effort and money it would take to sell even half 
that number of books?

5. I'm going to have to agree with Elaine and Diane, Graham, that even 
though you are fed up with those publishers (did you have three or for new 
editors over this time period too--that's common) if you want your book to 
see the light of day, you may just have to hold your nose, make that yet 
one more batch of changes they're asking for it, and sign the contract. 
Als, if you haven't already done so, do check out New Society Publishers in 
British Columbia.  They published Diana Christain's book and are about to 
come out with the new addition of Chris and Kelly ScottHanson's Cohousing 
Handbook.

6. OR if you really can't stand dealing with these guys one more minute, 
make note of what an acquaintance of mine (and a used-to-be cohouser) 
did.  He writes books on computer languages and had had several books 
published by a computer book publisher. Then he decided to publish it this 
way.  He put the whole thing on the web and told his potential customers 
that they could download the whole thing for free (and print it out or not, 
of course)  He also gave them the option to buy the paper/bound version, 
and sold, if I remember correctly, 2000 copies in quite short order. Hi 
printed the books "on demand" --google"print on demand" to learn more. In 
fact, I think he had to hire an order fulfillment company to send the books 
out.

I do wish you the best of luck, Graham

Joani


Joani Blank
510-834-7399
Cell: 510-387-1315
joani [at] swansway.com
www.joaniblank.com